National Government

That smart tough dumpy little man, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, knows how to face facts. Last week he faced the big fact hitherto ignored by the British Government: what Great Britain needs most is airplanes.

A whole series of politician Air Secretaries have bumbled and bungled without getting hurry up aircraft production on half the necessary scale. Churchill set up a new Ministry of Aircraft Production (separate from the Air Ministry headed by an old Etonian, Sir Archibald Sinclair).

Moreover he got a hustler to fill it: a bumptious, result-getting, self-made man, Baron Beaverbrook, the impish 146-lb.

"Hearst of Britain" whose London Daily Express has the largest circulation of any paper in English.

A Canadian village bumpkin who all his life has outsmarted city slickers, William Maxwell Aitken "The Beaver" skyrocketed from selling sewing machines, cement and insurance, in which he had little faith (even today self-reliant Beaverbrook carries no life or personal property insurance), until at 31 he dominated a Canadian cement company and liquidated his dominion holdings for $5,000,000 in order to go to the mother country and have fun.

In London scheming, thrusting Max sold to increasingly doddering old Andrew Bonar Law some life insurance, became the Prime Minister's closest friend, later "Canadian eye witness" at the front during World War 1 and in 1918 Minister of In formation and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In 1917 The Beaver began making a huge Fleet Street fortune by giving London a cockeyed version of low-brow U. S. journalism. "I have all the money any man can want!" Lord Beaver brook likes to boast, slapping his trouser pocket for dramatic emphasis while conservative Britons shudder.

Last week Max had a shock. Believing that his entry into the Cabinet would provoke storms of protest from his countless enemies, he was touched when Britons responded to his appointment with loud applause. Even Baron Camrose, major Fleet Street competitor of The Beaver, came out handsomely in his London Daily Telegraph & Morning Post: "As one of the new ministers comes from Fleet Street, which has the best means of estimating his powers, we may offer warm welcome to the decision which has made Lord Beaverbrook Minister for Aircraft Production."

It was a late hour for Britain to ask miracles of aircraft production. But Lord Beaverbrook, a friend of Air Secretary Sir Archibald Sinclair and a buddy of U. S. Ambassador Joe Kennedy, wasted no time lamenting. He got to work. The study of his palatial Stornoway House in London became his Ministry. He launched a lightning survey of the present status of British aircraft production, ripped out orders which brought aircraft-factory heads scrambling from all over the kingdom for lightning interviews with The Beaver. Most important of all, pals Max and Joe conferred regarding acceleration of U. S. aircraft shipments to the Allies, and almost certainly Ambassador Kennedy and Minister Lord Beaverbrook clicked with each other and with President Roosevelt.

In a strong-minded Blitz decision which delighted the kingdom, Max ordered that rugged individualist Lord Nuffield ("The British Ford") submit to a merger of his vast new aircraft works with the old guard firm of Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd. Purred The Beaver: "The thanks of the nation are due to Lord Nuffield."

The dynamic new Prime Minister worked so fast building his Government last week that in several cases lagging secretaries failed to let members of the former Cabinet who were carrying on ad interim know that other people now had their jobs. One minister first saw he had been ousted on the ticker tape at his club, another first heard it while listening to a midnight news broadcast, and our Minister of Information Sir John Reith was enraged at learning from one of his own bulletin boards that he had been supplanted by new Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper (TIME, May 20). Sir John last week became Minister of Transport.

Winston Churchill favored his predecessor by declining the job of Leader of the Conservative Party, on the ground that as head of a coalition Government it was not fitting for him to head a Party.

Almost crowded out of dispatches by war news last week was the annual British Labor Party Congress at Bournemouth. There Labor Party Leaders Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, who with Churchill, Chamberlain and Lord Halifax make up the War Cabinet, were accused by snouting Labor hecklers of "treachery to Labor" because they had joined the Government.

"Such accusations are a foul lie," roared Laborite Greenwood. "It would have been treachery if we had seen other countries go under the harrow and refused to do our share." Political Science Professor Harold Laski of London University cried that "Britain has been conquered only twice in its history. The first time was by William the Norman in 1066 and the second by Montagu the Norman [Governor of the Bank of England] in 1931. We take the view that the reign of Montagu the Norman should now ebb peacefully to its close."

French Socialist Leader Leon Blum appeared at the convention, was greeted with mingled catcalls and cheers. Orator Blum lit into the dissidents: "I don't know what would happen to Capitalism if we lose the war, but I do know what would happen to Socialism if the Nazis win. Wherever this mechanized Attila has passed, every workers' movement and institution has been destroyed."

The Conference adopted a resolution urging "bold Socialist planning" upon the Churchill Cabinet, but voted-2,413,000 to 1 70,000 full support of Britain's moderate Labor leadership and of the Government's war efforts. Solidly behind Attlee and Greenwood were the unions of British railwaymen, seamen and steelmen, and the Conference rose with its hecklers an embittered minority. Of Labor's entry into the Cabinet, Professor Laski cried: "This is a wreath laid on the grave of James Ramsay MacDonald."

The New Government completed last week finally consisted of 42 Conservatives, 18 assorted Laborites, eight assorted Liberals and seven Independents. Two outstanding omissions were Sir Samuel Hoare (slated to become Viceroy of India) and David Lloyd George.

*Excoriated as a "traitor to Labor" after the late George V persuaded him to form a National Government (TIME, Sept. 7, 1931).

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